One of my favourite environmental writers, my friend Merrick Godhaven, is taking shots at me and Mark Lynas – http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.com/2009/01/nuke-mark-lynas.html. It concerns that most divisive of green topics: nuclear power. Merrick argues that if you express even qualified support for new nukes, it takes the pressure off governments to invest in renewables and reduce energy consumption. He also exposes the contradictions in the positions Mark and I have taken over the years.

He has a point of course: governments will seize any excuse not to confront the electorate with hard choices, and to assist a powerful and none-too-scrupulous nuclear industry. But I feel we have a duty to be as realistic as possible about how we might best prevent runaway climate breakdown.

It’s true that my position has changed. As the likely effects of climate change have become clearer, nuclear power, by comparison, has come to seem less threatening. Three things in particular changed my view:

– reading the technical report by the Finnish radioactive waste authority Posiva – http://www.posiva.fi/raportit/POSIVA-2002-01.pdf. This seems to me to be a convincing demonstration that the long-term storage of nuclear waste could, in principle, be carried out safely.

But I have not, as many people have suggested, gone nuclear. Instead, my position is that I will no longer oppose nuclear power if four conditions are met:

1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account

2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried

3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay

4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diveerted for military purposes.

None of them are insuperable. In the UK Condition 4 already applies: as long as chapter 7 of the Euratom Treaty is rigorously enforced – http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12006A/12006A.htm
The big block is Condition 2. The most fundamental environmental principle, taught to every child before their third birthday, is that you don’t make a new mess until you have cleared up the old one. It seems astonishing to me that we could contemplate building a new generation of nuclear power stations when we still have no idea where the waste from existing nukes will be buried.

I have listed them, in other words, in terms of their impacts on both the climate and the wider environment. While gas comes top of the list, we cannot ignore the threats to its security of supply (though this could possibly be ameliorated by means of underground coal gasification).

All I am seeking to do is to be clear about the opportunities and obstacles. I realise that this will provoke hostile responses from almost everyone – including my friends – but we do our cause no favours by obscuring the choices we face.